Well, I'm not simply trying to dismiss the witness.
The circumstantial evidence includes the witness' medical symptoms and the observations at the site. The witness exhibited signs of physical distress for a period of months following a certain date. The observations at the site are remarkable only for an inconsequential level of background radiation and the apparent evidence of the witness' prodigious attempt at inebriation.
The eyewitness evidence is the story told by the witness, which includes the fantastic tale of an encounter with an alien spacecraft.
These are qualitatively different forms of evidence.
The investigator's task is to explain the observations. The site needs no explanation; by subversion of support there is nothing remarkable about it. The witness' physical symptoms are not explained. (The witness' mental state is immaterial to the physical symptoms.) However, the salience of the failure to diagnose the symptoms is in proportion to the diligence and skill of the physician. We don't know if the symptoms remain undiagnosed because they are truly mysterious, because the physician was not experienced enough to recognize them, or because the physician simply didn't consider them important enough (e.g., they were healing on their own) to diagnose further.
The witness offers eyewitness testimony, which we are meant to understand intends to explain the symptoms. However the testimony offers no causation. And the particulars of the testimony offer no toehold for confirmation. We cannot confirm that they occurred, and we cannot confirm that even had they occurred, that they would cause the symptoms we observe. The existence of the symptoms is not proof of the alleged encounter; that would be circular since the encounter is hypothesized to explain the symptoms.
In short, the UFO tale simply factors out of the whole scenario. It intertwines with evidence only because it is begged to.
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